Welcome to Loud & ClearSTL, the renamed and renewed blog for the Center for Hearing & Speech. We are a 501(c)3 non-profit agency that provides top quality speech and audiology services for individuals of all ages, regardless of one’s ability to pay. The blog is a tool we’re using to tell you who we are, what we do and how we do it. If you have a question, comment or concern about anything we post, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Episcopal Presbyterian
Health Trust (EPHT) has awarded $20,000 to support the Center’s audiology
programs this year.

With the funds received
from this grant, the Center will expand the current schedule of opening at the
Grace Hill audiology clinic from one day a week to two days a week. This will
allow clients living in north St. Louis City to have access to caring
audiologists and state-of-the-art audiology services in a more convenient and
timely manner.

Better hearing ability
will enable clients to rejoin conversations with family and friends,
communicate with healthcare providers, thrive in the workplace or school,
reduce feelings of isolation and improve their overall health and well-being.

“We are grateful to the Episcopal
Presbyterian Health Trust that will allow us to continue to diagnose and treat
hearing loss in the city of St. Louis,” said Dr. Rebecca Frazier, Center’s
chief audiologist. “These funds make the
gift of hearing affordable, thereby enriching our patients’ familial and
professional lives.”

The Center’s current audiology
program originally began with EPHT funding and a partnership with Affinia
(formerly Grace Hill) Neighborhood Health Centers. The Center’s current
strategic plan identifies North St. Louis City as our top priority community with unmet needs related to
audiology and speech pathology. In recent years, the Center collaborated with
Grace Hill to increase access to care for low-income clients. In 2010, Grace Hill
agreed to provide diagnostic and speech therapy services in two child
development centers located in O’Fallon and Soulard.

Affinia Neighborhood Health Centers
are federally-qualified health centers that provide low-cost, primary and
preventative health care to primarily low-income and uninsured residents living
in the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County. Affinia health centers serve
a growing caseload of low-income, mainly African-American individuals who
frequently request audiology services, previously unavailable to them.

Thanks to the awarding of a generous
grant by EPHT in 2013, the Center was asked to offer audiology services to under
and uninsured senior citizens at a Grace
Hill facility in north St. Louis City. Another grant enabled the Center to
offer these programs to all children and adults one day a week. With this most
recent funding, the Center will expand its current opening schedule to two days
a week. The Grace Hill/Center partnership site serves more than 12,000
children, adults, and seniors.

The partnership with Affinia is just
one of many relationships that the Center has had for many years with a variety
of St. Louis-based health-related organizations that assist senior citizens,
adults and children.

The purpose of the EPHT
is to provide health care and medical services to indigent people, primarily
those who live in the City of St. Louis, Missouri, or immediately adjacent
areas. The Trust makes responsive grants based on requests from area health
care providers seeking critical dollars to expand services, model new
approaches to health care delivery or to build collaborations. The Trust is
stewarded by volunteer leadership from both the Episcopal and Presbyterian
faiths and is administered by the Greater Saint Louis Community Foundation. For more about EPHT, visit www.epht.orgor call 314-880-4961.

The Center for
Hearing & Speech is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization that donates $1.75
million in speech-language, school screening and audiology services to
residents of metropolitan St. Louis and surrounding communities. It is a proud
member of the United Way of Greater St. Louis and was awarded the Better
Business Bureau’s (BBB) 2014 TORCH Award. The award is given to charities and
businesses that “demonstrate a commitment to customer service through
exceptional standards for ethical business practices,” according to the BBB.